Lectures on Modern History - Faculty of Social Sciences

<strong>Lectures</strong> on Modern History/49that it had helped to alienate the natives, whose temples were closed Rutthe solid structure of Almeida and Albuquerque was strung enough todefeat a second expedition from Egypt, after Egypt had become a provinceof Turkey, and an Indian war and insurrection. It declined with thedecline of Portugal under Sebastian, in the latter part of the sixteenthcentury, but it perished through its association with Spain, at the handsof enemies not its own, and not from internal causes.While the Asiatic empire was built up by the sustained and patienteffort of a nation, during seventy years, the discovery of the West wasdue to one eager and original intellect, propelled by medieval dreams.Columbus had sailed both North and South; but the idea which changedthe axis of the globe came to him from books. He failed to draw aninference favourable to his design from the driftwood which a tropicalcurrent carries to Iceland, and proceeded on the assurance of Pierred’Ailly and of Toscanelli, that Asia reaches so far east as to leave but amoderate interval between Portugal and Japan. Although he rested hiscase on arguments from the classics and the prophets, his main authoritywas Toscanelli; but it is uncertain whether, as he affirmed, they hadbeen in direct correspondence, or whether Columbus obtained the letterand the Chart of 1474 by means which were the cause of his disgrace.Rejected by Portugal, he made his way into Spain. He was found,starving, at the gate of a Franciscan convent; and the place where hesank down is marked by a monument, because it is there that our modernworld began. The friar who took him in and listened to his storysoon perceived that this ragged mendicant was the most extraordinaryperson he had known, and he found him patrons at the court of Castile.The argument which Columbus now laid before the learned men of Spainwas this : The eastern route, even if the Portuguese succeed in finding it,would be of no use to them, as the voyage to Cipango, to Cathay, evento the spice islands, would be too long for profit. It was better to sail outinto the West, for that route would be scarcely 3000 miles to the extremityof Asia; the other would be 15,000, apart from the tremendous circuitof Africa, the extent of which was ascertained by Diaz while Columbuswas pursuing his uphill struggle. The basis of the entire calculationwas that the circumference of the earth is 18,000 miles at the equator,and that Asia begins, as is shown in Toscanelli’s chart, somewhereabout California. Misled by his belief in cosmographers, he blotted outthe Pacific, and estimated the extent of water to be traversed at onethirdof the reality. The Spaniards, who were consulted, pointed out the